Countdown
by TheAmethystRiddle
Summary: All their small mistakes counting down to one final moment. An alternate ending to "Red Queen." Warnings for mild gore and character death.


It was just a stumble, just a little thing.

In retrospect it was a number of small mistakes that led up to it, the two of them rushing through the preparations as they counted down the frantic seconds until they heard that knock on the door. But now it was infinitely too late to take them back, as Madeleine Hightower could irrevocably attest.

_Three. They had forgotten the bullets in the shotgun. In the case of her being in Red John's employ, Patrick Jane had fully intended to shoot to maim or kill. So caught up were they in planning their large-scale scheme to free her that the most basic of safety measures went overlooked._

The click of handcuffs echoed like a shot through the halls of the CBI as Agent LaRoche hauled Madeleine to her feet. As he ripped the remains of the duct tape off of her hands, she could see out of the corner of her eye that Agent Lisbon was shaking violently, her hand pressed to her mouth. From the hazy prison of her mind, Madeleine tried to say that she was sorry, that she was so, so sorry, that it was all a mistake. All that escaped from her lips was a hoarse moan.

_Two. The duct tape was wrapped just barely too tight. From his rooftop vantage point Jane had seen the vans wailing home, screeching to a halt in the half-excavated parking lot and the agents pouring out like clowns out of a joke car. His hands shook as he wound the tape around around around around her hand and the trigger of the gun, and she had no time to protest what seemed merely an issue of comfort._

At first the shock had numbed her, taken her perception of the world and shoved it deep into her body so that everything seemed to be coming from a great distance. But now she had expanded out, each sense sharpened so that she knew she would never forget the horror of this moment. There was gore stuck to the glass partition that marked the edge of SCU's territory, red and white and gray matter hanging there like some obscene Halloween decoration. Poor Grace Van Pelt was on the floor, sobbing or vomiting or both. From behind her came the rhythmic beat of Agent Cho's vicious attack on a filing cabinet – fist, foot, fist, foot, forehead, fist, foot, and then a strangled shout of pain and rage. And Lisbon, oh, Teresa, a woman Madeleine had grown to love and respect like family, had simply collapsed, her hands skating through the spilled blood as if she could gather it up and give it back to its owner.

_One. They had treated it like a game. It was, after all, a con to be played. But they had allowed themselves to get excited, shivering a little and shifting nervously from foot to foot like rookie actors about to step onto stage. They had allowed themselves to give in just a little to the mania of it all, let themselves walk just a little too quickly down the hall, slipped just a little too far into their own thoughts so that their steps were out of sync, so that when she stumbled on that damn loose board that she'd been telling Luíz to fix for weeks it pulled her finger back just a little too far and all of a sudden BLAM went the back of his neck and there was a hole where his head should have been._

She retched now, reliving it, pitched forward and dragged the knees of her pantsuit through the blood, his blood, the remains of the top of his skull lying only feet away, those golden curls still intact but soaked red. Agent LaRoche stood above her, silent. In the bullpen Agent Rigsby suddenly shouted wordlessly and hurled a chair across the room, his face twisted into pain and rage and sorrow. She wished she could share that, wished she was an onlooker, wished that it was not she who had ended this man that had been her only hope of survival.

Two junior agents had to lift her limp between them. She could only think of her children now, of Mimi and Will without a mother, Mimi and Will with a murderer for a mother, Mimi and Will and prison visits and goddamn it all to hell, she hadn't meant to kill him. God_damn_ it all to hell.

She didn't struggle, didn't move at all as they dragged her to the elevator by her arms, but they were not strong agents, they were simply the first two that had been on hand, and as they reached the corridor that led to the stairs she slipped from their grip and landed face down on the faded marble of the floor. And they didn't pick her up, just stood there and stared, the whole room staring at her and she could feel the anger and the pain and the rising hatred pressing down on her.

So with the last of her will, she rose to her knees and asked the Lord for strength and forgiveness.


End file.
